Sunday 22 April 2007 19.06 EDT
First published on Sunday 22 April 2007 19.06 EDT

Unkind and snobbish people used to joke that former Prime Minister John Major had at least two disadvantages: a background in the manufacturing of garden gnomes and his idiosyncratic older brother, Terry Major-Ball, who has died of prostate cancer aged 74. Major-Ball, who looked a lot like his distinguished brother, was an apparently unselfconscious man, who radiated the qualities of Middle England, but was certainly never restrained in revealing his history, views and interests.

Without apparent rancour, he would describe how journalists who telephoned him to ask about his first flight (in his 60s), or what John Major had for breakfast, would suppress yawns when he really got into his stride.

When it came to family matters, however, he could be the soul of discretion: the media went away empty-handed when it was alleged that John Major had had an affair, 30 years previously, with a divorcee friend of their mother. And no public word about his brother's affair with Edwina Currie ever passed his lips.

Major-Ball epitomised a certain sort of Englishness that may seem more attractive as it recedes from view. His youth was unprivileged but self-respecting, traditionally honourable but unconventional. His father had spent his formative years in America because his own father, a bricklayer, had sought work there, but had returned to Britain to do a circus trapeze act and to appear as a music-hall comic. When he gave this up after 20 years, he set about manufacturing gnomes and other garden ornaments in his Worcester Park bungalow, south of London. It was expected that everyone in the family should pull their weight and Major-Ball did so without grumbling.

Major-Ball went to a private school and to the dancing school Morgan Juveniles. Then, as the family fortunes declined, he was switched to Cheam Common school and Stoneleigh East school. When a bomb smashed the windows of their home, he went, with the family, to Norfolk. Upon their return he did his national service in Germany with the Army Medical Corps. On his demobilisation, the army described him as "trustworthy". Against his father's advice, he made it a point of personal honour to try to revive the family business. When things got bad in the late 1950s, he paid his parents an allowance to compensate them for loss of income from the business, and went to work in Woolworths, Brixton, south London and for the South Eastern Electricity Board.

The emergence of brother John as chancellor of the exchequer (1989-90) and then prime minister (1990-97) altered all this, at least for a time. As he looked so like his brother, it was tempting for some journalists to let him display his "homely" attitudes and so undermine his brother's credibility. He was known to be helpful to journalists, and often charmingly artless. After being interviewed by the TV presenter Crystal Rose, he said that being a minor celebrity was great fun if it enabled you to meet people such as Crystal. He was featured on GMTV, Sky News, the Sky Book Show and the BBC World Service.

His autobiography, Major Major: Memories of an Older Brother (1994) was touchingly appreciated by core readers, some of whom bought multiple copies. The book received adulation as "one of the great comic books of the year" (John Wells) and "exquisitely funny" (Auberon Waugh). He was appreciated by some as a decent and good-natured man who did not begrudge less good-natured people the laughs he engendered.

He died in a hospice in Somerset; his death was not made public until April 20. Major-Ball married Shirley Wilson in 1960. She survives him along with a son, Mark, and daughter, Fiona.

· Terry Major-Ball, media personality, born July 2 1932; died March 13 2007